Down Time
by NinthFeather
Summary: All Might and Eraserhead push themselves too hard in a fight and end up laid up in a UA teacher's lounge. Aizawa, for his part, never really imagined lying around injured in a high school break room as part of the Pro Hero lifestyle.


_A/N: This is set sometime vaguely in season 1 of the anime, and if you've watched up to Eraserhead's introduction, it shouldn't spoil much at all for you. Thanks to SilverLunaMoon/FabHawk for beta-ing and help with figuring out the title!_

 **Down Time**

An important and under-appreciated fact about the UA second floor teacher's lounge was that it had two full-length couches.

This meant that Aizawa Shouta could be in his sleeping bag on one, with an icepack over his aching eyes, while Yagi Toshinori could curl up on the other with a trashcan close at hand in case he had _another_ epic coughing fit.

Shouta silently chuckled to himself. _Behold, the finest Pro Heroes of our generation. If a villain got in here, they could kill us in a minute. Two, maybe, if they were having an off day._

Toshinori made a soft groaning noise, shifted, and coughed. It sounded dry, at least, which was something.

There had been a bit of an incident before school. A small jailbreak; not the Villain Alliance, but an older organized crime group that probably wouldn't stop until someone killed them. Heroes didn't _do_ that, of course, so if Shouta ever wanted any _peace_ , he'd have to hope another gang went after them or something.

Shouta would be the first to admit that he was not, at his core, a particularly nice person.

Toshinori had overdone it, because Toshinori _always_ overdid it. Shouta, on the other hand, hadn't really realized he'd pushed himself too far until he'd come out of the battle with his eyes somewhere between burning and aching. And the eyedrops didn't really do much for the pain.

He knew better than to come to Recovery Girl for something like this. When he overdid it with his powers, she almost always told him to let it heal naturally-there was something about healing around his eyes that sucked up his energy, so it was either deal with the pain for a little while, or turn into an even more exhausted lump than usual for a day.

Toshinori, meanwhile, had fled to join Shouta after getting reamed out by Recovery Girl for not only pushing himself too hard but also apparently forgetting some of his medications and vitamins as a consequence of running off to fight. Shouta and Toshinori weren't precisely close, but among the UA faculty it was a pretty open secret that 1) Toshinori, because he'd had a gastrectomy, was supposed to be eating a certain diet, 2) he was not eating like that even a little bit, and 3) he hadn't died, and Recovery Girl hadn't killed him yet. Shouta figured the vitamins were probably the explanation. The doctors had probably made an allowance for Toshinori's...general Toshinori-ness, when drawing up a nutritional plan for him.

Someday, All Might's secret was _going_ to come out, and when it did, Shouta was going to tell class 1-A _all_ about the dietary requirements for people with his health issues. Toshinori wouldn't know what hit him. Shouta, on the other hand, would be able to sit back and watch at least a month's worth of entertaining hijinks, all at the Number One Hero's expense.

But in the meantime, here they were, trying to sleep off a battle in a meeting room, while Hizashi filled in for whichever one of them was supposed to be teaching. Shouta was...pretty sure it was him? But not positive. He hurt, and it was distracting.

The lights were off, for Shouta's eyes' sake, and the door was locked, to make sure no wandering students found out All Might's secret. It would have been awkward if either of them had been more awake.

This was _not_ what he'd imagined as a kid, when he'd thought about becoming a Pro Hero.

He wondered if the kids they were teaching now realized what they might be in for.

He wondered if, in fact, this was where they would end up, ten or fifteen years down the road.

He could almost picture it: An older Midoriya, fluffy hair cut short and frame filled out, slumped against a couch because if you break the same bone enough times eventually it starts predicting the weather by aching; Uraraka, with a thinner face and older eyes cuddled next to him, curled up around a stomach that's starting to wear out from all those little bouts of nausea. Brave, blunt, Tsuyu, taller and more sure-footed, carrying scars from some encounter she didn't back down from, or too-serious Fumikaze, feathers ragged and drooping, napping under a UV lamp after too long holding Dark Shadow in check.

It's wasn't a comforting sort of thought. Not at all.

"Do you think they'll end up like us?" Shouta asked aloud, without really meaning to. It wasn't necessary to be more specific, at least. Toshinori would get it.

"I think we're training them to be stronger," Toshinori said. Shouta could hear the damage from all that coughing in his voice.

"I hope you're right," Shouta said. And then regretted it, because he could _feel_ the oncoming joke. "Do _not_."

Toshinori laughed, then coughed. Shouta heard something wet land in the trashcan.

"This is a mess," Shouta said. "We're a mess."

"Were you expecting hero work to be neat and tidy?" Toshinori asked.

That was so like something he himself would say that Shouta was caught flat-footed.

Toshinori laughed again.

"Aren't you supposed to be resting?" Shouta muttered..

"I don't know that I've ever caught you off guard before!" Toshinori said, sounding delighted.

Shouta groaned. _None_ of this is what he'd pictured as a kid when he'd thought about becoming a Pro Hero.


End file.
